Everyone should see this movie.

I did not want to steal an image of Pixar's Walle movie but you all need to see it. Not just because it is visually stunning and humorous but because it describes a certain aspect of the human condition in a very haunting way. The movie abides by the classic "What if?" question that, in my opinion, defines science fiction. Anyways go see it and never, ever buy a cupcake in a cup.

OK it is time for a little guerilla blogging. I have two projects that I am supposed to be working on but its Friday and I still have not found that magical bathroom in the building. I should post a picture of my building. Ok here it is.

http://www.hamiltonpartners.com/location_overview.php?region=UT&type=office&id=68

Now that you have seen where I work, I can talk about what I really want to talk about and that is our site visit last Wednesday. We were able to visit the LDS Conference Center’s Rooftop Garden. We were also graced by the presence of Eldon the Head Gardener and Steve the Head Maintenance guy who both offered wonderful onsite insight to the really cool gardens. I tell you, the garden was so cool that I was giddy during the whole 2 hour tour.
To start off Eldon told us that National Geographic recently photographed the garden for an rooftop garden article that will published sometime next year. National Geographic will visit many of the world’s best rooftop gardens so keep your eyes peeled. Then Eldon explained that while the rooftop garden was the focus of the tour he wanted to stress that the entire site is technically a rooftop garden. The ground floor plaza is actually built on top of a parking complex, therefore all the street level planters and trees had to be built on a roof. Eldon then told us that the planters are filled with expanded shale which is light weight but structural strong enough to support trees. This expanded shale has organic matter mixed in but due to the deadline of the project many trees were planted without any organic material. These trees are easily noticed because they are all yellowy, chlorotic? Steve then pointed out a couple of trees that were also suffering because the architect had selected trees not suitable to Utah’s basic soils. After that we went up to the top of the Conference Center and got to visit the gardens.
Wow, I have to admit that when I think of greenroofs I often think of a tundra landscape. Mosses and low growing grasses dotted with red and brown lichen. This roof top garden has 30+ foot trees growing on it. The overall design of the garden is a representation of when the Mormon Pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. The northeast corner is planted with pine trees, broadleaf evergreens, aspens, elderberries, and an impressive range of forest flowers, representing the Rocky Mountains. The southwest is planted with a mixture of grasses, flowers, bristlecone pines, and shrubs to make it look like the valley did when the pioneers came down from the mountains. Also to the east is a fountain which symbolizes the mountain streams. This waters source turns into a series of rivulets that lead to the very edge of the building and pour down a multitier waterfall to the street level below.
At this time I need to thank KSU for teaching me to appreciate a prairie ecosystem, because the meadow part of the roof was beautiful. Utah has ahad a wet cold spring and so the normally mustard yellow summer meadow was alive with purples, and blues, pinks and yellow and all sorts of urban birds flying around and eating stuff. It looked really cool. Yet, iot took a lot of hard work to maintain. Steve said that the meadow was especially difficult to maintain because it needed frequent weeding. Invasive and noxious weeds are regularly deposited due to birds, and wind. The birds pose another problem too. Around the perimeter of the rooftop there is a planter known as the eyebrow. Think of the hanging gardens. The planter hangs out from the wall and forms a ledge where the cascading plants grow. During the springtime this planter is full of juniper berries and other avian delicacies, so what happens when birds eat? They poop, all over the sidewalks below. I guess every design has some flaws and offers us something to think about.
The last treat of the tour was that we got to go inside and see some paintings that were done by one of our LA’s father. They were three beautiful portraits of the Apostles. All in all, the site visit was wonderful and today I learned that there is a rooftop garden of note on top of the new city Library. I guess I have to go visit that too. Now, I did not take a working camera and so I do not have a lot of images.

Great Pizza

It was on a calm Saturday afternoon here in Salt Lake City. I had just gotten a call from my good friend James, both of our wives were out of town so we decided to live it up. We went to the movies to see Prince Caspian, good flick, but that is beside the point. In the movie theater there was a pizza place so we grabbed a slice and scarfed it down before the show. After the film James helped me move some stuff into my new apartment and before we knew it dinnertime was upon us. I suggested that we get pizza, real pizza. I had seen a pizza joint on the side of the road and it looked, authentic. Now we had eaten pizza once, so of course we had some reservations about eating pizza again, but like I said our wives were not with us.

Once inside I knew that this place was going to be different. I think I smelled the real wood burning pizza oven before I saw it. It was more than glorious. We both ordered a pizza margarita which is said to be one of the first pizzas ever made in Napoli. The taste was delicious. Everything a flavorful authentic pizza should be without a mountain of cheese to mask the tomatoes, the olive oil, the basil, and the crust. I asked the waitress about how they made their dough, I am a baker at heart, and she explained that the restaurant is certified by the Vera Pizza Napoletana, an organization that dictates the pizzas be made a certain size, with authentic ingredients, and baked in an 800 degree wood fire oven. I watched the pizza being made and it took 2 minutes to bake, and this left the pizza chewy, but charred all along the edges and the bottom. So, if you are ever in Salt Lake City, or Las Vegas visit Settebello. http://www.settebello.net/SLC/main.html Or you can just visit me this winter when I try to recreate that heavenly flavor on the grill outside of Seaton Court. You will need to call for a reservation.

Today, I am wearing black. There are no bosses here today. Therefore, it is time for my artistic German alter-ego to emerge. Jah dats right. I've just heard verd that there is a vunderbar bathroom on the fith floor of the this building this afternoon. I vill find it. Unt I vas glad vhen Germany von their Semifinal match against Turkey in the euro cup yesterday. Das is gut mine shnorbart! Later.

Green Rating, not Green Washing

At my internship I get to do a whole lot of stuff, most of the time. Some days there just isn’t anything for an intern to do: everyone is too busy, there are lots of boring meetings to go to, projects get put on hold, etc… Whenever I am not doing work I get to do research. Yippee! I have already read seven books on company time. The two areas of research that I am delving into are: Green Neighborhoods and plazas here in Salt Lake City. Plazas as a whole are very difficult nut to crack. There are over a bixzzilion variables and reasons why a plaza succeeds or fails. But enough about plazas, today I want to talk a little about green communities. The first thing of interest is the City Creek Center Project here in Salt Lake City, It recently received praises from the Salt Lake City Tribune as a “model for green design”. http://www.sltrib.com/ci_9654826?IADID=Search-www.sltrib.com-www.sltrib.com
In the news article it also noted that the City Creek Center is participating in a new Pilot LEED program for Neighborhood Development. Well, I have spent the last couple of weeks reading that Pilot program and trying to understand and summarize it for the office. It is a very interesting rating system, and there are a number of developments across the U.S. that are participating, so if there is one close to you, investigate and tell me all about it. For a list of the projects go here: http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=3546
To view the LEED Rating System go here: http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=148
But the USGBC is not the only one attempting to come up with a rating system. In fact the Sustainable Sites Initiative is an organization backed by the ASLA, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the United State Botanic Garden, and others. They are also in the process of creating a rating system for landscapes. For details and a very interesting amount of information visit: http://www.sustainablesites.org/ I would write more but the office actually has some work for me to do this afternoon. Peace out!

LunchandLearn

Here at IBI they have a wonderful program called Lunch and Learn. Each Thursday a product manufacturer comes to the office, buys us lunch and then educates us on whatever product they happen to be peddling. To date I have attended three such events. The first was bout cultured stone, very fascinating. The gentleman had a number of examples of what happens to stone veneers when water gets behind them. You can see their products here, http://www.coronado.com. The second was on modular walls from a company called DIRTT, which stands for Do It Right This Time. I think that the company spends the same amount of time thinking up cool names for their product s as then do designing them. In essence a very interesting company that has a computer software package that makes land/fx look like a Comodore PET. You can view their gallery here, http://www.dirtt.net/home/index.php. Today’s Lunch was all about waterproofing and airproofing your home. The presentation was very Architect oriented and the chocolate chip cookies had these huge milk chocolate morsels that really were not all that good. Oh well, for all of your waterproofing needs go to, http://www.henry.com/Home.9.0.html. This company actually makes a waterproof sealer that is used in green-roofs so check ‘em out. I will continue to post on the content of our lunch and learn program as well as links to the products we learn about. Hope you all are having fun out there.

Details, beautiful details.

Last week at the ‘ol internship I had a singular experience,
Guy: Hey Intern can you use CAD?
Me: Yes,
Guy: Have you ever done details before?
Me: Yes
Guy: Good put all of these hand drawn details into CAD.

So what details did I draw you ask? A paving pattern, an asphalt walkway, a wooden structure, and a retaining wall. Sounds kinda like a construction assignment not so long ago…. The best thing was that I finished the details in six hours, they were red lined the next day, and I didn’t even have to worry about when progress was due. Hooray!

Market Station Party

In my previous blog I mentioned that I went to a party with Skateboarders and Supermodels. I was not lying. We have been working on a mixed use development in South Salt Lake City called Market Station, http://www.marketstationliving.com/.
Well, it turns out that the main investor in the project has a daughter who was discovered by Elite Models last year, http://www.elitemodel.com/. This investor was so happy that his daughter was joining a modeling agency that he decided to build a development with Elite Models as one of its anchors. With such a posh company involved there was bound to be a great groundbreaking party. I was excited to see a finished space and to see how it performed during a large event I was excited to see landscape architecture at work!
I attended the event with: my sister and four of her friends. When we got to the location I was disappointed to see the plaza space I was imagining was really a street hemmed in by one finished apartment building and a chain link fence. So nothing was finished, nothing no buildings to define space just some port-o-potties. Anyways the event was hilarious they had a fashion show, and then the city council got out and dug up some dirt with shovels that were spray painted gold. Then they had a half pipe with some skateboarders, and then they picked the fashion show winner and then all the cool people with VIP bracelets got to go inside. Being but a humble intern I did not get a VIP bracelet. Oh well.
During the fashion show all of the models were wearing these wrist thingies, and so after the show we approached one of the ladies holding a bunch of these wrist thingies and we started talking to her. It turns out that she makes them herself and sells them at http://dtut-cuffs.blogspot.com/. Now these are not my kind of power bands but cool nonetheless. Maybe I will get some for the fall, or the winter when it is absolutely freaking cold in Seaton Court. All in all it was a fun evening, mostly due to my sister’s presence. I am just crossing y fingers and hoping that all the ground breaking I attend will have super models.

The second first entry.

The most difficult thing about starting a new blog is finding the time to write. First of all I do not have a computer at home and am therefore limited to the computer I use for work. I tired coming in early, but I don’t have a key and the landscape architecture crew comes in around 7:30. The Engineers come in around 8:00 and the Architects mosey in around 9:30. Anyways, I tried staying late and the boss doesn’t leave until after 5:30 and I have to get home. I have bread to bake. All in all it has been a wonderful 3 weeks here at IBI Group in Salt Lake City. The first week I was given the task of translating a conceptual master plan sketch to AutoCAD. So, I drew in road center lines and then they had me build out sidewalks and Right of Ways and building setbacks. Me they trusted me to do that. The crazy thing is that a week later they have not changed my street layout. I must have been really good at hiding my mistakes. Let’s just say that I don’t want to be in the office when the Civil Engineers get a hold of my street layout.
Aside form being an intern I have been exploring the local culinary scene and I am not disappointed. There is a wonderful array of foods and sweets to sample here in SLC. I also went to a groundbreaking ceremony with skateboarders and supermodels. My kind of people. Narf! But that is another story for another time.
Ciao!